August 24, 2012

I know people have been having more trouble with it lately. I'm going to take it off as an experiment. I've had it on so long, I've forgotten what it was like without it, and who knows if whatever it was will be the situation now? So please don't over-rejoice at its removal, because I might have to turn it back on. I presume I'll get a spate of horrible spam, including endless commercial links dumped in the early morning hours in thousands of old (and new) threads. You think the word verification is difficult, but I can't spend hours a day finding and deleting spam.

If (when) I put the word verification back on, here's a tip: Click the ⟳ until you get one that you find relatively easy to see. Don't waste your time attempting a difficult one.

UPDATE, next morning: It was a pretty good, low-spam over-night here on the blog. I think only 5 or 6 spam comments came in (only one of which was caught by the spam filter, but I found them because I get all comments emailed to me).

In case you do have to go back to it (and with the caveat that I don't know at all how these things work or what's available for different platforms), Amy Alkon at AdviceGoddess seems to have a good system - instead of typing in some strange smushed up set of characters, it asks you a nonsense question (Ex. "Do people drive to work in cars or pirates?") to which you type in the answer. Easy and sort of funny. Pirates are funny.

Several times this morning it took me 3 attempts to get through. In the the past I have wondered if one had to get exactly 100% of the characters right - there were a few times I made a wild guess or wasn't so sure I had the right character and the comment went through.

This is nice but you're going to get inundated with spam and have to turn it back on. It's too bad this is the only option for Blogger.

And yeah, I never even attempt a word verification unless it's kinda, sorta legible. Which it seldom is. Still, it's better than a lot of spam.

Also, Allie Oop is a stinky libtard.

^Just trying to fit in. I don't really think you stink at all, Allie. You probably smell like lavender and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Also, I am embarrassed for people who use terms like "libtard."

WV will be back shortly I predict. I always thought "is it just me that can't do this" but from comments here it seems I actually am pretty good as most of the time I have success the first time.

There are real problems with the app (google "blogger word verification" and see all the bloggers who have turned it off). I tried 36 times on one post and it wasn't reading the characters (yes, I typed them in correctly).

This is a great relief. What a time saver. I may now return to my work concerning a customer and, an investment placed under our banks management 3 years ago, I contacted you independently of our investigation and no one is informed of this communication and I would like to intimate you with certain facts that I believe would be of interest to you....

If true.. and I'm not conceding it.. it doesn't bode well for Obama.. My impression is the professor has posted more about Obama than anything or any one.. if you follow my logic.. it means regulars like me are spending less time time responding.. which means there are less liberals commenting.. which means they are not exited about their prospects.

I have become a used to WV, and Blogger's is not the worst, though I am not a fan of the numbers, since on many an occasion I can't read the numbers, and have to guess. Most often that has worked in the past, but...

Right now, I think that WV of some sort is the reality of a more mature Internet, which now comes with its predators - in this case, not the physical type, but rather, those who wish to appropriate our mental bandwidth for their unrelated, but completely selfish, purposes.

I think that maybe the problem with Blogger is that while you have to sign up to use it, maybe, it is so easy to do so, and there are so many people signed up with Google, that it becomes almost impossible to them to police such.

Maybe on the positive side for WV, is that it makes it incrementally harder to comment, and that slows, just a little bit, the more frivolous comments. I contrast this with sites, like Volokh, which don't require WV, and where I, at least, tend to respond with one or two liners, which I often don't here (but, that site doesn't really work with Firefox, so have to use an IE tab, which is a pain, so I tend to respond less frequently, but more often when I do).

Your Reds have a big series. I love Dusty. Ran into him in a Mexican restaurant after a Cub Cardinal games back a few years. His Cubs lost a tough one and he was @ the restaurant SHORTLY after the game drinking margaritas w/ 2 knockout blondes. A Dusty sandwich later? Anyway, he is a genuinely nice guy and was pleasant even though there were 2 Cards fans w/ me wearing caps. Dusty's Achilles heel is pitching. He has mismanaged pitching throughout his career. I would love to see him win a ring but he needs to overcome that hurdle.

All of this reminds me of that historic time when Althouse turned on the comments at Instapundit.

We few, we happy few, we band of commenters;For he to-day that commented on Instapundit with meShall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,This day shall gentle his condition:And gentlemen in the blogosphere now a-bedShall think themselves accursed they were not able to comment that day!

I enjoyed word verification version 1.0 It almost had a mind of its own and it was kinda fun to tack them onto the end of a comment. But when they switched to version 2.0 with the Euro house numbers, WV became a pain. But it never rose to the level of comment estoppel.

Instead of word verification, which drives me crazy, how about very simple randomly generated analogies (i.e., "puppy is to dog as kitten is to ___?" Or familiar completions ("Rolling ____ Band")? Wouldn't this thwart spammers as well as word verif.?

Word verification isn't bad as a rule, but the one you're using (or being forced to use), is like interpreting Sanskrit much of the time.

The old WV routine was actually fun, and I do miss it still. The near-words it provided were often strangely apropos to the topic of our conversations, and we could often play the wv game, providing our own snarky definitions and puns suggested by the verification string.

Instead of word verification, which drives me crazy, how about very simple randomly generated analogies (i.e., "puppy is to dog as kitten is to ___?" Or familiar completions ("Rolling ____ Band")? Wouldn't this thwart spammers as well as word verif.?

Sadly, no. IBM Watson proves that a having a fund of trivial information available for rapid recall is no longer an advantage held by humans over their computers. One area where we do hold an overwhelming advantage over computers and information processing systems is in extracting meaningful patterns from within background randomness (i.e. noise). The strings and photographed numbers that the current blogger wv system uses are extremely noisy for that reason.

This weakness is the subject of research at AI and robotics labs around the world. The Pentagon's DARPA is funding dozens of major research projects aimed at providing robotic systems with practical pattern-seeking ability. If it is achieved the first use will be highly secret for decades (at least that is the hope) and will be used in autonomous weapon systems which will be able to detect and destroy enemy assets even when hidden or camouflaged.

I liked WV if only for the fact it was so annoying you really had to want to say something. Get some skin in the game. I predict the spam will be back soon and wv will be back by noon tomorrow. Anybody wanna do an over/under on it?

Ps.

the last few comments I had 1 wv that had 1 gibberish word, and 2 numbers. A double digit number on top of a triple digit number.(or vice versa) Regardless, I chose wisely.